


Sehnsucht

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, One Shot, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Wheelchairs, cassian survives scarif, tw grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 18:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22002376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Sehnsucht: the inconsolable longing in  the human heart for what we cannot name. A yearning for a far, familar land one can identify as one's home.Cassian and Leia, alone together on Hoth, long for a home and find each other.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Leia Organa
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8





	Sehnsucht

Leia knows very little about ice planets but she knows a great deal about being cold. That’s made abundantly clear as she throws herself into the work required for a new Headquarters, after the abandonment of the Massassi temple on Yavin IV.

Abandoned. Not destroyed. She reminds herself of that, often. Because she’s lost everything else that feels like home, and the thought of losing one more thing is too much for her to bear.

Through she knows she’d bear it, if asked. She can and will carry any weight, anything the Rebellion asks of her, even if it breaks her back. Because the Rebellion is all that she has.

Maybe if she still had Alderaan, if she still had all those royal duties she used to hide from, the tutors she used to pull funny faces at, the silly courtly associates she used to tease, maybe then, she might complain about all the Rebellion asks of her.

But if she had all that, then they wouldn’t need to ask anything of her at all. Because her father would still be there to carry the weight instead.

Her newest project is the development of Echo Base on Hoth. Han’s made plenty of jokes about an ice planet for a woman made of ice. Luke has softly suggested perhaps maybe consider a place a little warmer. Leia ignores them both. She ignores most people these days, unless they speak of matter is vital to the rebellion. Because it is so much easier to be the rebellion than it is to be Leia.

After all, the rebellion needs a figurehead, but there is no Alderaan to need a princess. She is not needed to be anyone’s daughter but she knows she must be the motherly figure every soldier can trust in. She holds no hope for her own future and yet carries hope for everyone.

* * *

Mon Motha sends her a holo one day. “How go the preparations?” she asks, all businesslike and yet, kind, in the way only she can be. Leia thinks its a kindness that comes from caring only for the greater good, with no private thoughts of vengeance like the ones that circle Leia’s mind at night. “Are you finding Hoth suitable?”

“They’re fine,” Leia replies. And the preparations are fine. Relatively speaking. They’re fine in the way Leia has said the word over and over since her rescue. _I’m fine. Truly. I’m fine. Just. I’m fine, thank you._

The preparations existed, and so did she and that would just have to be fine enough. Because things certainly weren’t going smoothly. They hadn't anticipated wampas or earthquakes or anything, really. They hadn't anticipated surviving past Yavin, if she’s honest.

Mon inclines her head. “I found a resource that might aid you.”

“A resource.” Probably a droid who specialized in snow samples. Or a drill to cut through the thick ice hampering their building efforts.

Mon nods. Somehow, even through the crackling holo, she manages to look precise, calm, collected. Leia hopes that someday, she will be all those things, too. Someday, Leia hopes, her heart will know true calm rather than the mask she wears. “Someone who needs a project.”

Leia is used to the dark, these days. Her cell had no light on the Death Star. There was little light in the bunker they’d kept her safe in on Yavin IV. Odd how safety and imprisonment had so much in common. Her dreams, too, are pitch black.

Sometimes she sees her mother, that ghostly figure she remembers as the woman before Breha. It’s impossible, she knows, she’s seen the photos of her as an infant, held proudly by Breha and Bail. How could she remember anything earlier than that?

But impossible is nothing to the Force, Bail had once said.

_“Does that mean I have the Force, Papa?”_

_“Of course, darling. All of us do. It flows through all living things. Connects all that is with all that was and all that may yet be. It is everywhere, all at once._

If it was everywhere, Leia thinks, then it must exist, here on Hoth, too. Such a thought seems impossible. The wind is so bitter here, life such a hard battle for even tauntauns to fight.

But the darkness on hoth is a different sort. It is sudden and infinite and choking. When the blast doors clothes, it is only the tiny handheld lights giving any sort of illumination to ther world. There's a metaphor about the rebellion there, she thinks, but is too tired to pursue it further.

Sometimes, instead of the dark, she dreams of the stars, as they could only be seen from Alderaan.

That night, she dreams of the soft light of hier mother’s mechanical lungs.

A light more constant than and just as welcome as sunlight. A light made all the sweeter for the life it had once provided.

A life, like a light, now gone.

_It is everywhere, all at once._

Leia misses her mother then, so much that a single tear breaks free of her icy mask. Even under her blankets, it is cold enough the tear sends a chill down her back. If what her father had once said was true, did that mean her mother’s illuminated lungs and warm heart, her aunt’s smile, her father’s laugh, did that mean all of those things still existed, somewhere?

She closes her eyes and wishes so deeply she nearly hears them.

But her home is too far away and the ice of Hoth is too cold and so, Leia’s night passes silently.

* * *

Mon Motha’s asset arrives on a shuttle a week later. He walks down the gangplank with steps as determined as ever, which Leia thinks has less to do with med-tech and more with stubborness, because his grip on his cane is white-knuckled. This asset is no droid (though rumors say he is) nor is he useless (though newer rumors have begun to suggest such a thing.) The asset is a man, a simple, impossible, survivor of a man. One who speaks with the accent of the lost planet of Fest and watches with the eyes of a man who has lost his hope.

Cassian Andor salutes her. She nods in return, realizing that she is not the only one that has channeled all their grief into their tasks. Leia has lost her planet. He has lost his team, his best friend, even his career. He is no longer a spy, no longer Fulcrum. Cassian is merely a man from Fest, which is the only reason he remains useful to the Rebellion. It is now Cassian’s knowledge of ice, his memories of a planet destroyed by a long-ago war, that keep him with the title he has earned through blood and pain and loss.

He is both more alive and more tired than she ever remembers him being before. He’d carried so much, for so long, and in the end, broke his back for the Rebellion. The damage done to his spine might have killed another man.

But he’s here now, because that wasn’t his end. The rest of the crew, Rogue One as they’d been called, hadn’t been as lucky. THough Leia wonders, too, if that might not be called luck. To live on while everyone else is gone. To take step after shakey step instead of resting in the oblivion of nothingness.

She certainly doesn’t feel lucky. She just feels cold.

Her meetings keep her busy and it is two full days before she is alone with Cassian. Keeping busy has become her shield, against the threat of getting too close to others. Caring about someone else could just lead to losing them too.

Cassian’s own shield is the hoverchair that makes so many others avert their gaze away from him. It makes them feel guilty, fearful, embarrassed. They doubt they could make the same sacrifices for the cause he has done so willing.

When he enters the room,Leia looks up at him. She meets his eyes, as few others do, and smiles at him, as no one does. “I didn’t know you survived.”

“I’m not sure I did,” Cassian returns her comment with the same cold politeness. His hoverchair hums smoothly over the packed snow. He has already surrendered his cane, because Hoth is a brutal planet and the Rebellion is fighting a brutal war. HIs foolish pride, he knows, has no place here. There is a saying, on Fest, about the dangers of pride, but what does that matter? Cassian thinks. What good is a saying if there is no one to say it to?

“How so?” Leia asks.

“They were going to decommission me.”

“I see.” And she does. She imagines if instead of having a battle to plan, if she’d been told to take a seat, after she’d been rescued, what she would have done. She imagines those words, _decommissioned_ , stamped on top of a record that had written in blood willingly shed for the cause. She pictures a life where she is no longer useful to the Rebellion and she shudders. “I am glad you are here.”

“Wherever forsaken place here is,” Cassian replies, glaring out at the harsh white landscape.

“It’s not like Fest?”

His smile is as bitter as a tea once brewed for farmers on Fest. But what good is a farm when nothing will grow? “No,” he says. “Fest had color. Brilliant colors, like the dancing lights overhead.”

“I would have liked to see it,” Leia says. “Perhaps after the war.”

“The colors are all gone, now,” Cassian’s voice is curt. “The soot and ashes saw to that.”

“Nothing is ever truly gone,” Leia replies, though she is not sure she believes her own words. “All things exist together in time with the Force to connect them.”

“Even a planet that the Force doomed to die? It was lightsabers that cut through the first of Fest’s many-colored flags, Princess, not a stormtrooper’s knife.”

“The Force is with those who fight for the light,” Leia says. “Just as dawn comes for prisoner and royalty alike.”

“My father once said that the Force belonged to us all,” Cassian runs a hand through his hair, tousling it even more than the cold wind has done. “Perhaps he was not wrong after all.”

“He is neither wrong, nor forgotten.”

For the first time since he woke after Scarif, Cassian smiles.

* * *

The two make a strange pair. Strange enough to be commented on. He’s all angles and she’s curves. Her accent is polished, Core-World sophiscated. His rumbles with the strength of the outer rim and carries all the rolling musicality of Fest. One is a Commander-by-paperwork, the other, a General-by-field-promotion. Leia smiles often, has a kind word for every person they meet. Cassian’s smiles are so seldom seen that just a short nod from him will give an exhausted soldier encouragement enough to keep going.

Neither of them have a home, though both of them dedicate their days to making Hoth a home for all the troops. They work tirelessly on blueprints and diagrams, mission objectives and supply requests. The hum of Cassian’s hoverchair becomes as familiar to Leia as her own heartbeat. Cassian learns to tell time, not by the sun, but by the tapping of Leia’s foot.

Neither Festian nor Alderaanian has a home, though here, on Hoth, they are not alone.

Though, some nights, Leia still finds herself in a solitary state of mind. She wanders through hallways as once she had down palace walkways, as if hoping that one day she may yet cross paths again with her father. What is gone and what may be seem far too close together, here on this silent and cold planet.

One night her wanderings take her into the harsh landscape beyond the base. The wind, though bitter, does not feel as cutting as it once did, as if her own heart is less raw. Time has begun to heal her, her own stubbornness keeping her safe, just as once upon a time, her mother’s breath had been steadied by the mechanical lungs she needed to live.

Leia had never seen anything as beautiful as the light from those lungs, the literal light of life. They had glowed as steady as Alderaan’s sun for Breha, and had been as constant as a guidestar for Leia. Now, she wonders if she will ever feel warm sunlight on her skin again.

It was ironic, she thinks, that Alderaan’s sun remains, providing light for a thousand asteroids and ten-thousand more graves who no longer need it.

Cassian catches her staring up at the sky. He has done the same countless times, learned a new constellation on every planet, each one a map back to the sunlight which still shone upon empty, snowy shores. “Blast doors have to close.”

“I know.” As if anything on this base occurs without her knowledge. Wordlessly, she follows him in.

The stars remain above them, but now, are unseen, their light so distant and so cold. They are far away, those stars, light-years and ages behind them. The light of those stars, as they see them now, are the dawns of days long past, days where their planets had once thrived.

_The starlight is the bridge, connecting all that is with all that was and all that may yet be._

The fourth time Cassian catches her looking up at the sky, he says, “They never leave. Us, do they?”

Leia shakes her head. “But they never come home, either.”

He has no words, finds himself unable to speak, as his eyes find the star of Fest’s light, then Jedha’s, then, at last, Scarif’s. No. They had not come home, but at least they had found a home, for as little a time as it had lasted. “Up there,” he nods at the stars, “they don’t know it yet. The time has not yet come to pass, from where we see it. That is the light of a past time, a better time. You see, we live in their shadows.”

“No.” Leai shakes her head. “The better time will come with a dawn. It lies ahead.”

“Then,” Cassian tugs her, gently, toward base. He is used to leading her away from her past, but it is also a truth he has had practice living. It was by choice and not by force that he lost his planet. Fest had fallen so that the Rebellion might rise. “We should go back to work.”

* * *

They finally have managed to work out a functioning heating system for one room. Between his knowledge and her stubbornness, they have solved the problem of melting ice and their project makes the room comfortable enough to relax within.

Not that either of them know much about relaxing.

However, it is becoming apparent to everyone except them, that both their heats are learning a great deal about melting. There are whispers in the hallways, as there always are, but now, the whispers are kind, and hopeful.

In the room, Cassian shucks off his thick parka, and moves from the hoverchair onto a bench, stretching. “The warmth feels nice.”

Leia’s gaze travels over his back and shoulders, all the lean muscle there, and replies, “quite nice.” Not knowing how to admit she doesn’t feel warm, enough even here, but she’s starting to feel. She knows so much about being cold, these days, and so little about being happy.

She’s about to try to find the words, when he turns to the side to reach for a map.

Through the thin shine of his back, blue light glows. Four vertebra and six ribs, all outlined in a soft biochem blue.

“Oh.” Her voice catches on the snag of a memory. It’s the same glow she had once saw on her mother, the same light that had soothed her back to sleep after a nightmare.

But she had never thought she’d find peace again after the real nightmare of the Death Star.

“Something wrong?” he asks.

“No,” Leia shakes her head, quickly. “Nothing. I. I just…” her words falter. It has been a long time since she has wanted anything within her reach. “You’re beautiful.”

“Kind of you to say,” he replies quickly, his Festian manners on display. What good are manners, he had long thought, when there was no one to impress?

But Festian manners had come from Alderaan, as had its language, many, many lightyears ago. Some things are connected by more than just the Force.

Cassian pats the bench next to him. “Prin--Gen--” He tries out two names for her. Neither fits anymore. Their protective layers, not just of parkas and coats, are gone. “Leia. Sit.”

She does. “The light of your spine. It’s beautiful. The color reminds me of…” She cuts herself off again, not yet ready for the whole truth. “Reminds me of the watch-towers of Alderaan.” A half-truth, for a half-hearted woman.

“It was a beautiful planet, too.” Cassian’s voice is soft and respectful. “You honor me with the comparison.”

“And you honor me with your company.” Leia’s manners, too, had come from a planet now-gone. But the response is the one deserved by the words he had spoken. For a moment, the two simply smile at each other. Then, slowly, their fingers intertwine, just as their pasts had once been woven together.

His survival had led to her capture. His plans, her freedom. Fest had fallen to the weapons of her forefathers and his weapons of mind and body had not been fast enough to save her own father.

But just maybe, they could save each other.

“You’d like Fest,” he says softly. It has been a long time since he had said the name of the home he had lost. “It’s a planet full of strong women.” They’re still there, waiting in alcoves and pockets, waiting for the Rebellion to bring them freedom.

“Oh?” “And,” he says, with a tiny smile, “we have spring.”

He’s looking down at her, and Leia realizes she’s… warm. For the first time in ages. Her gloved hand rests on top of his, but the warmth travels deeper, all the way to her bones. Her, on this planet of ice, surrounded by ghosts, she finds that she has found a home, a life, and a warmth she had lost a long time ago.

They’re still sitting there, an hour later. THey haven’t spoken. Maybe they don’t need to. They’re good at carrying things in their heart, at holding hope, at fighting for a dream that they may not live to see. THey are the light from worlds now gone.

Leia leans in, and Cassian mirrors the movement. The cold is gone from her and all she knows is the warmth in his eyes.The first kiss is sweet. Shy. Tentative. It is the first step into a new world, one they both might call home, someday.

“Sorry I-” he begins.

“I’m all right,” she whispers back, nudging him a little with her nose. “If you are.”

His smile is brighter, warmer, more wonderful than any star, even those that no longer have a planet to dawn upon. “Yes.” he whispers, and kisses her once more. Their longing for what they could not name melts away, as they find peace in each other's arms. Their past lies behind, their future ahead. Home is here, in this moment.

_It is everywhere, all at once._

The stars remain high above them, hidden behind icy clouds, and yet, their home stars watch over them the same as always.

All that is loved is never forgotten.


End file.
